UFC Nashville full of age disparities and pair of bouts with 15-year age gaps

UFC action resumes this weekend following an early-summer off-week with a Fight Night event chock-full of longtime fan favourites.

Saturday’s card, which will mark the UFC’s seventh event hosted in Nashville and the first there in two years, is headlined by a meeting of heavyweight knockout artists Derrick Lewis and Tallison Teixeira plus a welterweight co-main event between Stephen Thompson and Gabriel Bonfim.

Lewis and Thompson are two of the UFC’s more popular elder statesmen in the sport, and both are facing tough challenges at Bridgestone Arena.

“The Black Beast” is the UFC’s all-time knockout wins leader and is set to compete in his 13th UFC main event against a fighter who only has eight professional mixed martial arts bouts to his name.

Lewis has won two of his past three fights and is seeking consecutive wins for the first time in more than four years after going 3-5 in his past eight overall.

Teixeira is 8-0 with eight first-round stoppage wins. The promising six-foot-seven heavyweight prospect is coming off a 35-second win in his UFC debut in February after earning a contract on the Contender Series roughly 10 months ago.

Lewis extended his total knockout wins record to 15 in his most recent appearance when he took out Rodrigo Nascimento in the third round of their Fight Night main event last year. Lewis hasn’t fought since that bout with Nascimento, and that was 14 months ago. He was scheduled to fight in Edmonton this past November but withdrew from the event due to illness.

Meanwhile, “Wonderboy” is looking to snap a two-fight skid when he takes on Bonfim in a clash of styles.

Bonfim is 17-1 as a pro with 13 of his victories coming via submission, including a D’arce choke win over Khaos Williams four months ago.

Thompson is a karate-style kickboxer coming off a knockout loss to Joaquin Buckley in October. The two-time title challenger in the 170-pound division is an eight-time performance bonus recipient but has lost four of his past five overall. He also has losses to Shavkat Rakhmonov, Belal Muhammad and Gilbert Burns in the past four years, while mixing in a Fight of the Night win over Kevin Holland.

One interesting theme for UFC Nashville – particularly with the two featured fights on this weekend’s card – is the many wide age gaps between opponents.

In fact, there is a 15-year age gap in both the main and co-main events this weekend.

Lewis is 40 while Teixeira is just 25, and Thompson is 42 with Bonfim being 27. Those are two of the biggest age gaps in UFC history.

The record for the biggest age gap between UFC opponents was set when a 28-year-old Royce Gracie fought a 51-year-old Ron Van Clief, who was only six weeks from turning 52, back at UFC 4 in December of 1994. It was Van Clief’s lone MMA bout and Gracie won via submission in just four minutes.

Nothing has come close to that 23-year age gap, although there have been other notable examples over the years.

Randy Couture was the oldest champion in UFC history and competed regularly against opponents more than a decade younger than him.

Couture fought seven UFC opponents who were at least 12 years his junior. His biggest age gap was when he defended the heavyweight title against Gabriel Gonzaga in 2007 when he was 44 and Gonzaga was 28.

Glover Teixeira was 42 when he lost the light-heavyweight title to a 29-year-old Jiri Prochazka in 2022.

Yoel Romero had a memorable rivalry with Robert Whittaker. They had two incredible five-round bouts, one in 2017 and one in 2018, and both happened after Romero had already turned 40 years old. Whittaker was the younger fighter and won both times while enjoying a roughly 13.5-year age advantage.

Most recently, lightweight Chase Hooper has worked his way into this conversation. Hooper made his UFC debut in 2019 as a 20-year-old, so he has become accustomed to being the younger fighter in his matchups, often by a significant margin.

Hooper’s two most recent outings have been two of the biggest age gaps in UFC history. His December matchup with Clay Guida had a 17-year age gap with Guida being 42 and Hooper 25. His very next outing four months later was a 16-year gap when he faced 41-year-old Jim Miller.

The biggest age gap on the women’s side of the equation happened in 2024 when one-time strawweight title challenger Karolina Kowalkiewicz took on Iasmin Lucindo. Kowalkiewicz was 38 at the time with Lucindo just 22. Kowalkiewicz’s next opponent was Denise Gomes who was two months shy of her 25th birthday while Kowalkiewicz had recently turned 39.

Another significant age gap matchup at Saturday’s event is 41-year-old Lauren Murphy, who turns 42 at the end of the month, returning to the cage to face 31-year-old Eduarda Moura on the prelims. Murphy is the oldest female athlete currently on the UFC roster. There’s also a 10-year difference between heavyweights Vitor Petrino and Austen Lane.

Of the 12 scheduled fights at UFC Nashville, only four of the matchups feature opponents within five years of each other.

Below is the projected bout order for UFC Nashville:

MAIN CARD

-- Derrick Lewis vs. Tallison Teixeira

-- Stephen Thompson vs. Gabriel Bonfim

-- Calvin Kattar vs. Steve Garcia

-- Nate Landwehr vs. Morgan Charriere

-- Vitor Petrino vs. Austen Lane

-- Junior Tafa vs. Tuco Tokkos

PRELIMINARY CARD

-- Max Griffin vs. Chris Curtis

-- Jake Matthews vs. Chidi Njokuani

-- Lauren Murphy vs. Eduarda Moura

-- Kennedy Nzechukwu vs. Valter Walker

-- Mitch Ramirez vs. Mike Davis

-- Fatima Kline vs. Melissa Martinez